The current release in progress is WordPress 7.0. The release has a proposed date of April 9th, 2026, with beta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1 targeted for February 19th. The release is currently in Alpha status.
About Release Schedules
Releases are broken up into three phases: alpha, beta, and release candidate.
alpha: Development of new features and enhancements, broad tasks, bug fixes.beta: Refinement of new features, but no additional features can be added. Bug fixes can continue.release candidate: Continue refinement of new features, bug fixes can only be merged if they are fixes to new features. Double committer sign off required on all commits.
WordPress 7.0 Work in Progress
- Tickets milestoned for WordPress 7.0
- WordPress 7.0 Gutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ project board – not yet published
Key Goals – Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
During the 7.0 release cycle, we’re continuing to work on the group of accessibility tasks opened in the past several years. These tasks have had considerable work done already, but need further research to identify what work remains. (See also the closed accessibility tasks: these are completed.)
We’re also working on an older task that has not previously had work done to implement improved accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) in core admin notices, following up from the implementation of new admin notice functions that are handling output and markup of these notices in core.
Currently, the goals for 7.0 include an admin-wide design refresh, so ensuring continuity in accessibility there is also an important goal.
Key Goals – Editor
As the editor team considers the addition of new blocks, we’re actively testing and consulting on these new features to ensure that anything added to the editor is as accessible as possible.
Some of the blocks recently addressed include:
